Learn – Methods Sections

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The Methods section is your plan of action for the research study you are conducting. To write the Methods section, you need to record very important details from your study procedures, and those details can help you conceptualize your Methods section more clearly. In this chapter, we will discuss the purpose and the formatting of the Methods section, followed by writing strategies to achieve the goals within Methods sections.

The Purpose

Remember that it is not just the Introduction section that is a written argument. Your entire manuscript should be viewed as one large argument, and all its sections must be persuasive in order to convey the value of your work. For Methods, the central argument is that your actions are rigorous and trustworthy. You can establish this argumentation by describing your work so that it can be replicated or transferred to other research contexts. This replicability requires a detailed description of approaches used to collect and/or analyze your data and the steps taken to conduct the study or experiment. Your argumentation should also include references to external research that helps support or justify your decisions. This referencing is one important way to achieve readers’ trust in your decisions. Overall, by demonstrating transparency in your methodological choices, you can establish credibility for the study results and overall contributions.

When making methodological choices, consider erring on the conservative side and including all details of your study. Leave it up to the editors, reviewers, or research mentors to decide if your methods contain unnecessary detail. If you are using human or animal subjects, details may include statements that your experiment was conducted according to accepted norms and standards in your field. Clarifying that you have obtained informed consent or that you have followed guidelines from your discipline are particularly important.

If your study contributions are largely methodological, you will need to emphasize throughout your manuscript that your methods bring new knowledge to the field. You can do this by problematizing the research in the Introduction as a way to emphasize the methodological problems, gaps, general questions or hypotheses. You may choose to reemphasize those methodological concerns in the Methods section.

Establishing credibility and building trust does not mean that limitations should be disguised. Actions taken in your study should be detailed enough that all potential limitations impacting your results are addressed. Hiding elements of your design, perhaps due to a limitation, is considered unethical. Limitations are normal and at times unavoidable. Therefore, the best way to approach limitations should be to clearly state what the limitations are while briefly rationalizing why they occurred. It is common to give a gentle acknowledgement of weaknesses, problems, or shortcomings of research in Methods because the Discussion section will allow for broader discussion of limitations.

The Format

Before discussing the overall format of the Methods section, choose a model article within your area of interest. A model article should represent strong research writing and ideally reflect a similar methodology as the manuscript you are currently writing. Once you have chosen that model Methods section, answer the following questions:

• Where is the Methods section located?

• How are the Methods sections and subsections named?

• How is the Methods section organized?

• What is the length of the Methods section?

It is best to extend this analysis to all the articles in your Choose a Model Article and Compile a Corpus activity from Chapter One. In this way, you can get a general idea of patterns in your field rather than relying on knowledge from a single article.

Now that you have a general idea of what Methods include in your field, let us go back to the hourglass figure. The Methods section is usually right at the center of the hour glass where all the information is narrow and specific to your study. This part in the argument is where you justify your actions in your research.

If your Methods section is aimed at a multidisciplinary audience, is new or controversial, or is essentially a “Methods” paper, your section will likely be more detailed and extended. Otherwise, you may write a more succinct section, like in the fields of chemistry, material science, and molecular biology.